THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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Freud appears never to have encountered a case of demonic possession and, despite his
fascination with religious and occult phenomena, published only a single paper on the
topic. The paper, titled A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis (1923), is a
psychoanalytic interpretation of an historical manuscript detailing a 17th-Century artist's
pact with the Devil, and its symptomatic consequences. The importance of this case
study lies in the general psychodynamic hypotheses that Freud advances as the
intrapsychic genesis of demonic possession.
The specific case concerns a Bavarian painter, Christoph Haizmann, who in 1677 was
"seized with frightful convulsions" (Freud, 1923, p. 74). He confessed to the priest that,
having felt despondent about his artistic future, and having been tempted nine times by
the Devil, he had promised in writing to give himself to the Devil after a period of nine
years. He had made himself "a bondslave to the Evil One and had undertaken to lead a
sinful life and to deny God and the Holy Trinity" (1923, p. 83). This nine-year period had
expired and the distressed painter, having repented, was convinced that only the grace of
the Mother of God could deliver him from his pact. After a prolonged penance and
period of prayer, the Devil appeared to him in the Chapel at midnight on the day of the
Nativity ofthe Virgin, and gave him back the pact which he had written in his own blood.
The painter's symptoms disappeared, but returned a few months later in the form of
visions, convulsive seizures, painful sensations and paralysis. This time, however, he
was persecuted, not by the Devil, but by Christ and the Virgin Mary. Having once again
been delivered from the Devil's clutches, he joined a religious order and, despite repeated
attempts by the Devil to seduce him into signing a new pact, managed to resist the
temptation.
Freud begins his psychodynamic reconstruction of this case by establishing Haizmann's
motive for entering into the pact. Since he had rejected magical power, money and
sensual pleasure when the Devil had first tempted him, his motive was not immediately
clear. Freud provides the context for the pact by noting that Haizmann's father had died
shortly before the Devil had first appeared. Haizmann had "fallen into a state of